Steal this Dream: Abbie Hoffman and the Countercultural Revolution in America

Author: Larry Sloman

Publication date: 1998

Doubleday

Publishers description:

"In the tradition of Edie, the oral biography of Edie Sedgwick, Steal This Dream is a captivating roller-coaster ride of an oral biography of Abbie Hoffman and the sixties, told by over two hundred of those who demonstrated, protested, and lived through those tumultuous years.

Abbie Hoffman was at the center of most of the political and social tumult of the sixties, as a participant, disciple, instigator, leader, and dissident. He helped fight for civil rights in the South, organized on behalf of the poor in New York City, was a leader of the Flower Power generation in Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, and was one of the most vocal and visible counterculture guerrillas in the fight against the war in Vietnam. He created chaos on Wall Street, experimented with psychedelics, hashish, speed, cocaine, and free love, planned be-ins, attempted to "levitate" the Pentagon, helped to disrupt the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and was one of the forces behind Woodstock. A genius at exploiting and manipulating the media, and through them, inspiring a counterculture across the country and throughout the decade, Abbie was the most famous hippie and revolutionary of modern times.

A fast-paced and utterly compelling oral history told by the people Abbie worked with, for, and against - from Tom Hayden and Jerry Rubin to Paul Krassner and Timothy Leary - Steal This Dream is the finest social history of the sixties yet written."